by Isoellen
"My client sees no reason the contract should be forced to end, since it clearly states she has access to all accommodations whether or not the alpha is using her services for the duration. She is perfectly happy with things as they are and has offered no grievance," the scribe for the brown-haired purple jewel was saying. Neena was seated on her cushions while her scribe spoke behind her, daintily sipping her tea and looking innocent, batting her eyelashes every now and then.
This was the same argument offered by the two other girls, Laira and Eze.
Bella's scribe agreed, but added another point. "My client was promised ease from the first alpha for two estrous heats. As you know, it is difficult to contract with available alphas of Constantine Kane's age, strength, and unique potency. Indeed, to our knowledge, he is the only available alpha with these extensive qualifications. There is no one to replace him."
Sasha paused at the words "unique potency." She glanced at the queen for a reaction.
Bella's scribe continued. "Speaking for all the seated clients, they have done nothing to void their contracts and do not deserve the dishonor of ending the exchange early. It is known to be an honor to serve in the house of the First Alpha Administrator, and to be set aside will decrease all of the ladies' value as agents of the exchange."
Sasha bit back a snort of disgust. In the slums, they were just called whores.
Sasha had tried to not hate the betas Merrick brought in. She'd been friendly at first, thinking them like the drones, with no choice in their labors. They soon enlightened Sasha that no force was involved in the job. They chose to work on their backs because it was better than being a shop girl or struggling through higher education for something else. They liked it. Obviously, they weren’t the only ones.
Taj responded. "The Queen disagrees. You are accused of hiding the presence of an untouched omega breeder and exposing her to the lust pheromones that triggered her first estrous before she was prepared for it. You are also accused of intentionally lying to the same untouched omega breeder."
"Untouched," Bella sneered.
Sasha wondered how someone who sold herself for sex could be so judgmental.
The scribes argued a bit about who had done what in regard to Sasha's night in the big room. The queen listened, looking bored. The jewels followed the flow of the conversation as they all had a dog in the fight, but none had thus far spoken up.
The longer they argued, the more irrationally angry Sasha became. They were not staying. Not the smug, conniving, unmarked breeder. Not the redhead, the blonde, or the brunette. Kane would not let her leave, so they would go, and that was all there was to it.
"You are not staying. There is nothing for you here. He hasn’t been in this room for months. It sounds like the contracts have that all covered. Knowing how alphas are, this can’t be the first relationship to end early. Since he won’t come back to this room, you are not wanted or needed. You will go." Sasha inserted.
"You have no right to speak here," Bella said. "You are nothing. Just a little—"
The guardsmen in the queen’s entourage drew their swords in warning.
Sasha straightened her shoulders, confidence raised by the sight of the drawn blades. She pointed to them. "That is my right. I’m here now. The man won’t let me leave, and I’m not going to share. Take your paper contract and a pile of sector credits. Go. This is my place, my territory. There is nothing for you here, and I don’t think you want to stay.
"Who will do your laundry, prepare your food, and clean for you? Most of servants of this house do not like you or how you treat them. They will gladly ignore you. Since you all don't seem the type to know how to wash your own feet without help, I think you should take your settlement and go."
"How dare you?" Bella hissed.
Sasha would dare a lot. Her instincts were taking over, her intellect set aside. If Bella continued hissing, Sasha was going to attack her, pull her hair and shred that look off her face.
"Is it only because I’m a younger rival? Is that why you hate me? I walked into this room a child, you knew that. Saw that. You were kind and then you were vicious. You wanted me to see you with him so that I would know my place, I guess. Is it because you come from the slums too? Did you have to prove something to me? Or were you trying to prove it to yourself?"
Bella flinched.
"You are not where you are born. And you could have been more, kind, better, even in this world. You could have chosen a different path. Breeders choose. You chose poorly."
Sasha tapped her heart and stood up. She caught the look of surprise on their faces and wondered at it, until she looked at Queen Annalise and realized she should have deferred to the other woman. Biting her lip, Sasha held out her hands to help the queen stand and was grateful when she took them.
The queen looked at her first chair. "Fulfill our end of the exchange contracts and escort the ladies out, please." Her smile at the room was gracious and ice cold.
Sasha saw where Kane got it from now.
Chapter 16
Kane sent a wooden trunk. The big, metal wrapped thing appeared one day in his rooms, along with a message that it was the contents of Sasha’s father's safe and not to open it yet.
She was pleased he’d kept his word.
But the thing sat there like a portent of something ugly to come. She had once eagerly anticipated revisiting the unique recipes that had made her father's pub famous. Their bottled gin sold well in the markets of the better sectors. She had fond memories of washing, filling, and sealing glass bottles for her dad to take with him for selling.
He'd talked about licensing fees, material costs, and transporting problems, and he blamed it all on Administration holding him down. They couldn't handle enough bulk product to make it cost effective. She had dreamed with her father, and when he was gone, she’d dreamed with the drones who were her family—that one day, they would thrive.
Now she wondered what he had left out of his tirades. What had he not said about his dreams for expansion? She thought he meant for her to work alongside him, but her conversation with Kane had shaken that belief.
There was more in that safe than just recipes. Her father kept logs and journals. He had shown them to her. He’d started in his school and military days and never gave up the habit. There was a very good chance that those accounts and writings would support all of Kane's accusations against her father. They might even point to where her half-siblings had gone.
Sasha was afraid to find out.
She let go of the image of her dad as the man who’d helped and cared for everyone. She let go of the idea of him as a good person. But she didn’t want to think that he had been so selfishly driven that he never loved her and only planned to use her.
She couldn’t think that.
*
Sasha was crossing from the rear service port to the laundry house when the outside breeze shifted. Her hair lifted from her back and the bottom of her dress briefly twisted around her legs, the thin material pulled tight. Turning into the playful feel of the storm scented afternoon air, she started to laugh.
The sound died in her throat when the breeze brought the smell of a musk so much more potent than a storm. She hadn’t smelled that for months. She’d nearly forgotten save for the traces in the house.
Kane.
The back of the compound was a common entrance for drones and employees alike. It was easier to drive through the gates and unload there and avoid the front of the building with its grand circular drive facing the street. Sasha walked past transports and drones at work, waving distractedly back at them when they called out greetings.
That smell. It made her mouth water. She needed more of it. The tiny bit of it filled up her senses.
She searched faces as she followed the spiced musk scent. It could be she was smelling someone who had been with him, or maybe his laundry.
The enticing aroma was there and gone again. Her task forgotten, all her attention narrowed and focused on Kane.
She had some things to say to that absent man.
She followed a gravel road that curled around tall trees toward the back of the property. Never having explored here, she thought it was a forested area or a park. She hadn't expected to walk up a slight incline, pass a guard checkpoint, and suddenly find herself looking down on a military exercise arena.
Shirtless, wearing some sort of belted, skirt like cut-off pants, Kane was a giant in the center of the ring of alpha males. Holding two thick bladed swords, he used the weapons to strike and pummel the men who attacked him with their own weapons in numbers of threes and fives.
Many of the men wore padding on their chests, legs, and arms. Kane's strikes made loud thwomping noises that echoed through the air. As she got closer, Sasha could see that Kane's swords were only wood, while the attackers used the heavy blades owned by those who'd served in the king's army for thirty years or more. Alphas only.
He was the alpha of alphas. A warlord. Any man who could beat him in challenge would be honored, might even take over Kane's compound and station, because breed respected strength like no other species. The old and the weak did not rule; they were cut down by the young and the clever. Kane was as old as his parents bond, his life lengthened by the close contact and powerful love of his mother’s breeder's blessing.
He moved with the grace and power of a man at his peak in a dance of death too quick for the eye to follow. Taller than every other man in the yard, corded with muscle, he should not have been able to move so fluidly.
But his body was perfectly balanced, naturally fit. Much like a lion or a panther whose grace and power was inborn, he did not train to look the way he did. No. Sasha could feel it, smell it from where she stood. He was fighting and pounding on those poor men to relieve the explosive pressure boiling inside of him.
She could hear him, rage and daring in his guttural snarl as he taunted his prey. "Can't you touch me? Can not one of you weaklings draw blood today? Where are the alphas? You think you are elite? You are weak little bitches. Come touch me, damn you. Cut me!"
Two men fell under one of his vicious blows, knocked silly and staggering back, only to be replaced by three more men. The men were all tired and bruised, as if they'd been trapped in that circle exorcising the warlord’s demons for days.
"Hurt me, you fuckers." He threw down the wooden swords with fury, now facing naked blades. "Can't a one of you make me hurt? Cut this burn out of me? Shaw, I thought I saw something in you, but you're just a weak little cocksucking priss like the rest of them, aren't you? Can't see for shoving your dick in Nicky's ass, is that it?"
He taunted and badgered; all icy control gone. To Sasha, the men were more cautious now that he'd dropped his weapons. She saw why when two men struck at the same time, one at his chest, the other to the back of his legs. Kane bent back away from the chest blow, and using his long reach, he grabbed the sword hand of the man behind him, yanking him off his feet and tossing him at the other.
The move left Kane flat on his back, men descending. But they weren't quick enough—and he rolled—swept out a leg that toppled men just watching and waiting their turn, bounced to his feet, and threw out his fist at another incoming blow.
His smell was more than spice and musk—it was feverish rage, heat, and unquenched need. Seductive tendrils of it filled Sasha's senses. Stormy light caressed his perspiration slicked body. She thought he might have lost weight. His cheeks were slightly concave, his abdominals pronounced with hills and valleys.
"Give me blood," he demanded, nearly walking into a weapon only to pull it from a man and pound him with his fist.
In response, all the men dropped swords and attacked with fists and kicks in such an impossible frenzy Kane couldn't avoid all the blows to his head, his torso, or his beautiful body.
It was hard to see what was happening in the writhing mass of testosterone fueled males. They were beating on him and simultaneously trying to subdue him, pulling him to the ground.
Sasha realized he wasn't wearing cut-off pants, but an actual black leather skirt. It flipped up when they tackled him and forced him to his back. Twelve men—more, because they were supporting each other, acting as anchors—pinned him with four sitting directly on him.
His massive cock, arched up away from his body, thick, dark, angry, and painful looking.
"Do it you bastards. Do it!" Kane was yelling like a madman.
With faces twisted in scowls, two men grabbed hold of Kane's cock. Hard.
Kane yelled again, even as another grabbed his balls, all of them punishing and squeezing together. There was no pleasure in this violence, not for anyone. It was ugly and forced, an act of mad desperation to cause a release. Sasha thought it was the thing that had been driving Kane, robbing him of control, making him insane with unfulfilled need.
He was in rut, a full on rut, and had taken no woman to relieve it.
With that thought, Sasha felt her own anger. That was hers. What were they doing? She stormed forward. No one thought to stop her. No one dared.
"Get off him."
Her female voice was filled with quiet power. They heard her through all the noise of Kane's obscenities and male aggression. She was just a small bit of female nothing, but her fury—bitter and raging—was its own storm. Males scrabbled away as if a wild beast, sharp clawed and poisonous, had walked into their midst.
"Mine," she hissed at them. When they didn't move fast enough, she clawed at them with her fingernails. "Get away. He is mine, and I don't share."
Sasha attacked Kane. Throwing herself into his chest, she wrapped arms and legs around him even as he was sitting up.
She had one hand locked in his hair, the other clawed into the curve of his deltoid. His arms went around her in response. His sweat dampened her skin, his smell intoxicating, his strength possessive and unbreakable.
He got to his knees and stood from that awkward, top heavy position with Sasha clamped tight to him. The jarring made her think he was trying to leave.
No. Not again. She had chosen. He was hers.
Sasha opened her mouth on his delicious skin and gave him the bloodied wound he'd been asking for, biting hard into the fleshy muscle between neck and shoulder, clamping down with her dainty little omega teeth and claiming him.
Standing, ringed by his men, Kane threw back his head and roared. The primal sound reverberated through the ring and through the compound.
Every alpha in the compound answered him.
The triumphant agreement ringing in her ears, Kane jostled her. Her dress shredded—skirt torn. He bared her, moving his hand below her bottom, and with a flick and a pull, he opened the belt and released his skirt.
His cock was right there. He moved her, trapping the piece of flesh between their bodies, pressing the swollen slit of her vulva just at the top, clit to cockhead, so that the golden honey of her breeder's slick would spill down over him.
Sasha had to stretch her neck to keep her hold on her bite, sucking the thick iron of his blood while maintaining the perfect rubbing position of his fat mushroom tip lined up with the engorged bundle of nerves her clit had become.
Kane wrapped her tight in his arms, bone crushingly so, keeping the position as he moved, walking with purpose away from his warriors.
He took her to their rooms and found the nest on her bed. It was massive, comprised of most of his dirty laundry. Sasha had found his clothing before it could be washed and brought it here, along with blankets he had ejaculated on in his sleep and pillowcases he had drooled on. If it smelled like Kane, she took possession of it and let no one touch it.
He was alternately purring and growling for her, pleased at the sight. She was too gone now to be embarrassed, too hungry and determined.
His rut had triggered her second estrous. Her claiming heat.
While clamped on his neck, she made sweet, needy little noises. Tension built in her abdomen, want a cramping, painful thing.
He tried to set her down. There was an instinctive
protocol to a nest—the breeder invited the alpha in—but Sasha wouldn't release him. He was her nest; didn't he know that by now? He was shelter and safety, and she was not going to let him go.
"Come, Beauty, come. Show me what you have built for us. Show me where I will give you my seed," he coaxed with a rumble that stoked her desires.
Sasha loosened her hand from his hair, gave a demanding point to the bed, then tightened her hold and her teeth in him. She was worrying the flesh so much, there'd be a piece of it missing later.
Kane rumbled, all his aggression gone. She bathed him in her want, and in turn he covered her in a dribbling fount of pre-cum.
On his knees, he maneuvered them into her bed, him on his back, her on his chest. He inched and scooted, throaty groans escaping as the tormented flesh on his cock rubbed at the silky folds of her womanhood.
"Waited for you," he rumbled into her hair. "Mad for you, my Beauty. Fuckin’ insane for you."
Sasha unclenched her jaw. "Mine," she said with a growl.
"Yours, Beauty. Since the moment you ate from my hand. Yours."
Sasha cried. Tears of relief, of pleasure. She set her blood-touched lips against his, not knowing what to do next.
Kane showed her.
He kept one hand on her backside, cupping both cheeks with his large paw and pressing down while his own hips pressed up, working her pleasure. His other hand twisted her braid, two rolls of it into his fist until he pressed it at the back of her neck while his mouth opened over her—lips brushing, licking, tasting.
There was no technique to the wet joining of mouths. It was a battle to get as close as possible, taste and inhale as much as one could.
Sasha's tongue roamed over his incisors and brushed against his tongue while he growled and chased hers. Then he was kissing the corner of her lips and her chin, nipping and biting and owning.
Pleasure built between her thighs and in her belly while he rolled his hips, higher and higher, the intimate caresses making her wild. There was a sudden burst of sensation, and Sasha cried out with her first full orgasm.